Google Reduces PageRank of Many Sites

Both Daily Blog Tips and Andy Beard are covering a dramatic drop in PageRank for some very popular web sites. The drop happened overnight and while there’s no concrete evidence as to why, speculation includes selling links or interlinking within a network of sites.

Another theory is that Google is changing the PR scale. I don’t think this is the case, as we’d see pretty much all sites drop in PR. As we avoid selling paid links, and don’t benefit from links from a network of blogs, we seem to have made it through unscathed–although, that doesn’t mean MP and other sites could be caught up in this at some point.

What I’d like to see next is a report on whether any of these sites have seen a reduction in Google traffic. After all, if it’s just a cosmetic reduction in PR, there’s no big deal.

http://www.brianchappell.com Brian Chappell

“What I’d like to see next is a report on whether any of these sites have seen a reduction in Google traffic. After all, if it’s just a cosmetic reduction in PR, there’s no big deal.”

I found some others as well. Checking there rankings for terms, no noticeable difference what so ever.

http://www.altogetherdigital.com Ciaran

The fact that New Scientist, the site that Danny ‘outed’ (a term I disagree with btw) has also dropped to 5 (I think that it was on 7 or 8) suggests that it’s all about the links…

http://www.elixirsystems.com Fionn

Interesting. Google has said repeatedly that they will find a way to penalize sites selling links maybe it was not the FUD everybody keeps calling it and they were actually serious. They have wall to wall PHD’s it cant be that hard to figure out.

http://www.jaankanellis.com Jaan Kanellis

All about offering PAID links right Ciaran?

http://www.altogetherdigital.com Ciaran

@Jaan

yes – my bad; I missed out paid…

http://www.thevanblog.com Steven Bradley

Paid links are the obvious culprit, though it’s an interesting list of sites. Hard to imagine their PR going down other than through a Google penalty of some kind.

http://www.brianchappell.com Brian Chappell

I am showing all the aforementioned sites back to their original PR.

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com Andy Beal

@Brian – I’m still seeing the reduced PR numbers.

http:://www.jasonbartholme.com Jason Bartholme

My blog is going from a PR5 to PR3. I’ve been sick to my stomach all day.

http://andybeard.eu/ Andy Beard

That little green bar can have all kinds of weird knock on effects.

Whilst today I am the centre of attention (before the Facebook deal) on Techmeme, maybe their algo uses TBPR a little.

All those nice tables that send you 10 visitors per day start to add up to 50-100 visitors a day that are often potential new subscribers.

Am I enough of an authority for others to want to tempt me to link back to them on a story, or will they look elsewhere hoping for a reciprocal link?

2 weeks ago I speculated that I might not be passing pagerank, though it is hard to determine as there are other factors such as my expading tag clouds, and the pages I gain lots of links on also reciprocating with the dofollow trackbacks.